Beautiful lotus flowers! Their buds are also lovely.
Alice, under your conditions, how many flowers over the course of the summer do you think you get?

So far it has been 12 this year with more buds coming along. First flowers were in May. The flowers are 10" across so they are pretty spectacular but because of their size they have trouble with our windy weather and blow over easily. Frankly, I prefer the more traditional flowers like Paul is growing.

How beautiful, lovely combination of colors.

That's a lot of petals. Great photo, I like the reflection.

'Love of Rain' lotus

WOW, that is a beauty. It says it holds the flowers well above the leaves. Have you had any problems with wind knocking them down. That is what I was dealing with my big lotus, the flowers were like a sail and over they went.

This is a new one for me, planted this spring from Bergen. So far all of the leaves and flowers have been less than a foot above the barrel they're planted in, and the bloom here is only six inches across, so no issues with wind, but they're really pretty small compared to my big white lotus (always 12+ inches across and 4 feet in the air).

By contrast, Pink perfection, also newly planted this spring from Bergen, seems to be struggling to get its blooms above the leaves. Maybe they're contrasting with something like that one. It has produced 8+ buds so far, though the first never opened and the second bloom was a bit bedraggled when it did. Hoping they'll sort themselves out as they go. Here's a picture from when there were only six buds (two hidden under leaves):


And its bloom:

Paul - Beautiful bloom!

What fertilizer do you use to get your water plants to bloom? Some years mine bloom, but most years I just get the leaves only. I use waterlily fertilizer tablets. Which do great for getting the lotus to grow, but it is hit or miss with blooms.

I don't generally fertilize anything. But I do plant them all in muck. I live next to a river delta, and my native soil is a mix of sand, silt, and river rock. I sift it and use it for planting nearly everything in the water. But below that I use a layer of rich compost from my own piles for the water lilies (usually in fabric pots). For the lotus, I use the silt that I clean out of the sumps every year. It's considerably finer than my soil, and the lotus seem to love it.

Getting them started is still a challenge for me sometimes, though. Of the 5 tubers I got from Bergen this spring, two didn't grow (the most expensive ones, of course). So far the native soil has been most successful for me as a starting media. But when I've got a larger plant to move, as when cleaning out an overgrown lotus, I put them straight in the muck without issue.

I should also mention that there's fish in all of the containers. There are goldfish in these barrels. They last longer for mosquito control than the dunks. Might be some fertilizer coming from them, too.

Oh, and sunlight. More sunlight=more blooms here. And we have some crazy overpowered summer sunlight in the desert here. My large white lotus lives in a 3 foot container sunk into the perennial garden where it misses the first 4 hours of sun each day, and it blooms a bit less there. But it gets lots of debris that breaks down in the water, and its massive flowers put even the roses to shame.

No rich soil in any part of Florida, I buy water plant soil and frankly it is pretty bad, I swear it is only kitty litter. I do use fertilizer tabs and this year I doubled up on how many I used. The water in my tub gets hot and I have to flush ir often to cool it and just to fill the tub as the big leaves transpire several inches of water a day. I figure the fertilizer gets diluted that way and found doubling the number of tabs did not hurt at all. My sun is limited here and very dappled, not strong at all. I would up with about a dozen, maybe 14 flowers on my plant this yer. It started early as we had some unusually hot weather and the water warmed early. It is finished now for the year and starting to look bedraggled.

I kind of like this pink perfection in the evening when the messy half petals are hidden inside.

Pretty shot.

My sons are visiting and I was about to have them move the lotus pot to an out of the way spot and wouldn't you know, I found two more buds! Between the heat and the wind, the leaves are looking pretty ragged. at his point it is sort of an eyesore. DOn't want to miss thouse flowers though.

@psa 'Perfect perfection'…. So lovely…
I also went to your geodesic greenhouse page . Yikes looks way to complicated for me, although very interesting design. I was curious about the interior shelving, are they rounded to fit the inside ?

Thanks. I really take too many pictures of these...

I never did put attached shelving in the geodesic as I had planned. I just have (mostly metal) standard shelves set up in there, always overflowing with plants, of course. I mean, there's a big tank in the middle that I think I've pictured on this thread, and some aquaponic beds, and a few aquaria on the north side for raising fry, etc.

Rhonda Kay was really late in blooming this year. I think I need to fertilize it

Absolutely gorgeous!